Designing Your App’s Icon

More and more apps are being added to Google Play and the Apple App Store every day, which means that your app is slowly getting lost among millions of others. Creating a strong ASO strategy helps you overcome that and a part of that strategy includes the design of your app’s icon. When your app appears in search results, you want it to stand out, to grab the user’s attention enough for them to either download the app or read more about it.

What Not to Do When Designing Your App’s Icon

When working on the design if your app’s icon, there are a few things you do not want to do:

No Words
The icon appears in search results near your app title so there is no need to waste that space on more words.

No Copying
You want to stand out, remember? So copying from your competitors will just make your app even more invisible in the long list of similar apps.

No Clutter
Your icon is pretty small so keep it simple, don’t clutter it with too many details.

What You Do Want to Do When Designing Your App’s Icon

Here are few things that are good to consider when working on your icon’s design:

High Quality
While the icon in search results appears small, it should still be provided in a high quality. The icon you provide is actually very large, 1024×1024, so make sure all of the little details look very good at full size.

Be Consistent
You should aim for a design that is relevant to your app and consistent with your brand’s visual language. You want to appeal to your audience, but you also want to make it easy for them to remember you – that is done through consistency.

Borders
You never know what kind of background will be on a person’s phone and how your icon will look, it may even be invisible on some backgrounds. The solution to this is to add a thin and simple border so that you can ensure that users who download your app don’t forget about it.

Check the Guidelines
Every app store provides very precise guidelines for the app icon. Make sure to read them so that you can provide an icon in the right size and resolution.

Hire a Designer for a Professional Icon Design

If you want to ensure that your icon looks professional, you may want to consider hiring an experienced designer. There are a number of places you can look for a designer, some more expensive than others:

Fiverr – Fiverr is, as the name suggests, services for $5. There are a number of gigs there that cost more with extras so it is most likely a good icon will cost around $20.

UpWork – Formerly known as oDesk, UpWork is a great place to find freelance designers within your budget.

Dribbble – This is a contest-based website where you can get designs from a number of different designers and choose the best one. You can find a lot of great designers on Dribbble.

Doing it on your own is not recommended if you are not an experienced designer, though you can attempt it with the available tutorials online.